Re: NEW ocaml licence proposal by upstream, will be part of the 3.08.1 release going into sarge.
Sven Luther <sven.luther@wanadoo.fr> writes:
> On Mon, Aug 16, 2004 at 12:22:38PM -0400, Walter Landry wrote:
>> Sven Luther <sven.luther@wanadoo.fr> wrote:
>> > On Tue, Aug 10, 2004 at 10:36:22PM -0400, Walter Landry wrote:
>> > > Sven Luther <sven.luther@wanadoo.fr> wrote:
>> > > > Hello,
>> > > >
>> > > > Ok, find attached the new ocaml licence proposal, which will go into
>> > > > the ocaml 3.08.1 release, which is scheduled for inclusion in sarge.
>> > > > As said previously, it fixes the clause of venue problem, and the
>> > > > clause QPL 6c problem.
>> > >
>> > > Great!
>> > >
>> > > > The problems concerning QPL 3 remain,
>> > >
>> > > Not so great.
>> > >
>> > > > but consensus about it has been much more dubious,
>> > >
>> > > I haven't seen anyone seriously dispute my analysis in
>> > >
>> > > http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2004/07/msg01705.html
>> > >
>> > > that there is a fee involved (you questioned whether it was an
>> > > acceptable fee, not whether it was a fee at all). Matthew Palmer
>> >
>> > Bah, i am just sick to deal with this.
>>
>> You are free to move ocaml to non-free if you don't want to deal with
>> legal issues anymore.
>
> Sure, whatever. This only proves that debian-legal is not to be thrusted, and
> a big time looser. See Brian suggesting we move X out of main and into
> non-free. And the release is at hand, there is no time to loose by endulging
> in extended flamewar here, which are futile in the hend, so please don't
> propose such aberhations.
Sven, please stop lying about me. I never made such a suggestion.
Shown something I thought was a new MIT/X11-like license and a claim
that it was non-free, I tried to explain why that claim would happen.
When told that much of X was under that license, I went off to do more
research.
Your intemperate nature makes it very difficult to work with you
towards a painless solution here.
> It would be different if debian-legal could be thrusted, but it can not. What
> i see here, is that roughly half of the people who had troubles with the
> original problem are more or less satisfied by now, while the other half is
> not. What i ask you is to put a stop on this right now, sarge will ship with
> load of non-free stuff after all, and let me work on making this and my
> remaining packages, including the kernel packages i co-work, ready for sarge.
>
> Or do you prefer i lose another week or two fighting you here and stop all
> work on the remaining of my packages ?
I think what we'd prefer is that you stop fighting, acknowledge the
problems with QPL 3, and fix the bug in your package. We've all got
better things to do than fight this out with you too, and it's
painfully annoying that you make it so difficult.
>> I fail to see how requiring modifiers to contribute to proprietary
>> software helps free software.
>
> Because the proprietary version can only happen if the _SAME_ patch is also
> applied to the QPLed version.
To *some* QPL'd version. It doesn't have to be the public one.
> Also, this clause allow upstream to apply the patch to his tree
> without over burdening him to keep two separate trees.
What's burdening him is his desire to have a proprietary version, not
a contribution of free software for him to use in other free software.
> So this means that more patches can be incorporated, and thus the community
> benefits from it. The fact that there is a proprietary version which is _THE
> SAME_ as the QPLed one, is hardly even noticeable, especially in the ocaml
> case, where i doubt there is any significant business going around the
> proprietary version.
It's not the same. It has extra features -- anything from the free
software community goes into both, but INRIA's own work or paid work
for paying supporters can go into the private one alone. And if
there's no business being helped by this clause, then what's the harm
in removing QPL 3?
> Now, this is much better than the BSD situation, where any code can be made
> proprietary without restrictions, and the BSD is free.
But the BSD license doesn't *force* a proprietary version; it just
allows it. The QPL forces modifiers to grant permission for a
proprietary version.
That force is what makes it non-free.
> And ? Did i not say that the ocaml team was considering moving the licence to
> the little brother of the CECILL family ? And that we should postpone the
> debate right now until those are released, and upstream is ready to make the
> change, probably for the next version. I even provided the link and quoted
> upstream on this two times here, but nobody seems to have cared.
You have not posted a link to a new CECILL-like license that I've
seen. In any case, if this is a plausible solution for you, then why
not move OCaml to non-free for Sarge, then move it back when it's
under a Free license?
-Brian
--
Brian Sniffen bts@alum.mit.edu
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